Action Alternatives

Youth Support Group Building Skills To Help Avoid Society's Scourges

As a mother and a community activist, Terry Baldwin knows far too many children are negatively influenced by many of today's more prevalent scourges - substance abuse, teen pregnancy and sexual abuse.

Although these same ills existed when she was growing up, they have increasingly become "more profound now," she says

And 32-year-old Baldwin of Hampton is doing something about it.

In October, she founded a youth support group called BCKJ-N-Action, or Beliefs Concern Kindness Joy-N-Action, with the purpose of providing area youth with alternatives to the all too common negative influences many children face daily in and out of school.

Baldwin decided to form the organization so the group's members could build leadership skills, form lasting friendships and become active in the community.

Currently, there are five active members in the club. Two club members are neighbors of Baldwin and two are classmates of Baldwin's daughter Tamara. The group meets each Tuesday afternoon at Baldwin's home, but she's looking for a larger meeting place so that she can accommodate future members.

In the short time the group has existed, the members have been very active socially - shopping trips, slumber parties, New Edition concert. Civically, they co-sponsored a Christmas party for needy children with the Red Lobster on Mercury Boulevard, caroled and gave clothes and a food basket to needy families.

Married with two children, Baldwin firmly believes that "unless we take an active interest in our kids, then we will pay for it later because they are our future."

Her more-than-active interest in the group's members has helped build the girls' self-esteem and shape their career outlooks, such as:

* Baldwin's daughter Tamara is BCKJ-N-Action's president. The 9-year-old fifth-grader, who has been going to school since she was 18 months old, is two grades ahead of schedule at Smith Elementary. Her long-term goal is to become a pediatrician. "There are few women doctors...that's why I want to be a doctor.".

* Nine-year-old Veronica Charity wants to become a lawyer. She is a fourth-grader at Smith Elementary.

* Kathryn Ezzell, 10, wants to be a kindergarten teacher. She is a teacher's aide to kindergarten children at Smith. The fifth-grader is also on the honor roll.

* Tamiko Jones, also 10, wants to become a divorce lawyer because she finds the television show "Divorce Court" "interesting." The fifth-grader has watched the show "every day since the third-grade." She has a cousin who is a lawyer.

* Eleven-year-old Nadia Kirkland, a sixth-grader at Spratley Middle School, is a bit more flexible in her career choice: Nadia wants to be a doctor or singer.

Dr. Nancy Helms, director of guidance and testing for Hampton City Schools, says it is "very natural" for young children, even at the kindergarten level, to begin thinking about what they want to do for a career. And she says it is important that the schools and parents assist the children early with their career choices by "looking at other options and not limiting them to one career (choice)."

Helms says next year Hampton City Schools will implement elementary level counseling programs which will include career advisory services for students. Currently, the school system offers those services to middle and high school students.

Baldwin, a part-time volunteer who describes herself as a "Christian first," is no stranger to forming organizations modeled to support youngsters and steer them in the direction away from drug use, delinquency and consequential unemployment.

In 1986, when her husband Calvin, who works in the nuclear field, went to Arizona briefly for a job with the power company, Baldwin formed a group similar to BCKJ-N-Action. Called Westside in Action, the Arizona group today has a rolling membership of about 400 and continues to provide youth with alternatives to negative behavior through enriching activities and peer and community support, she says.

Baldwin says the Hampton group's immediate objectives are to add new members, find professionals willing to act as role models and become incorporated so that the service-oriented organization can apply for federal funding. She also plans to network with various city and school officials and local church and business leaders to plan activities for the Hampton community.